Aerospace Diary

AINONLINE by    NEELAM MATHEWS With removal from the EU’s safety black list, PAL can now fully justify its acquisition of Airbus A330s (below) along with A321s. (Image: Airbus) July 11, 2013, 12:28 PM Philippine Airlines ( PAL ) has become the Philippines’ first and only carrier removed from the  EU  air safety black list, an operating ban imposed three years ago within the 28-state European Union ( EU ). Meanwhile, the  U.S.  Federal Aviation Administration has begun to reassess the Category 2 rating it issued to  PAL  in 2009. Category 2 carriers cannot start new services to the  U.S.   FAA  safety inspectors arrived in the Philippines a few weeks ago, leaving  PAL  executives hopeful that they can soon proceed with plans to expand services into the  U.S. Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines ( CAAP ) director-general William Hotchkiss said raising safety standards had r...

Posted by- Neelam Mathews July 10, 2013 Even as India struggles with its safety issues,  f ollowing improvements in the safety situation in the  Philippines , Philippine Airlines is the first airline from this country allowed back into European skies since 2010. The European Commission has updated today for the 21st time the European list of airlines subject to an operating ban or operational restrictions within the European Union, better known as "the EU air safety list". all air carriers from the Philippines were banned from the EU in March 2010 following very poor results from an ICAO audit in 2009 which led to a significant safety concern (SSC) being issued by ICAO. A follow-up audit by ICAO in October 2012 showed some improvements had been made, however the SSC was not removed and another added.  A further audit in February 2013 found sufficient progress had been made to lift both the SSCs. For all other carriers registered in the...

Neelam Mathews Nov 6, 2012 The ARUM (Adaptive Production Management; www.arum-project.eu)  operational between 2012-2015 project aims at improving planning and control systems for manufacturing of complex products in small lot production, such as aircraft and aircraft interiors. ARUM will do this by decreasing the risks of product immaturity and production disruptions, ICT improvements for manufacturing systems and increasing the integration of engineering into production process. The ARUM team will identify mitigation strategies to respond faster to unexpected events and will provide ICT systems and tools to enable this. The overall budget contribution to the initiative amounts to €1.2 billion between 2010 and 2013, to be shared between the European Commission and the private sector. ARUM started in September 2012 and will last for 37 months involving 14 partners form seven EU countries plus Russia. The participants are technology providers (TIE, Certicon, Smart Solut...

Suzanne Rab, a partner at King & Spalding in London, has experience in proceedings before the UK’s  competition and regulatory authorities, and the European Commission.  Excerpts from China Business Law Journal April 30, 2012 Comparisons between the stellar growth and potential of two of the world’s biggest economies, China and India, become increasingly irresistible as both these Asian super-giants compete internationally and are prospects for foreign investment. Against this background, it’s timely to examine where the two countries stand on their recent adoption and enforcement of modernised competition laws. China introduced its Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) on 31 August 2007, with effect from 1 August 2008. India’s new competition law  under the Competition Act 2002 (Indian Competition Act) has been implemented in two stages with powers to regulate agreements and commercial practices effective from 20 May 2009, while me...